Marine reserves: Serving up easy meals for seals and sea lions

There's an old saying that has a lot of truth to it: beware of unintended consequences. We need to keep that warning in mind as Oregon moves toward creating a system of marine reserves. If we aren't careful, hungry seals and sea lions could be the only real winners.

I've participated in the marine reserve process as a member of the Oregon Ocean Policy Advisory Council (OPAC) for the past three years. Now that OPAC has completed its review of the reserve proposals, I want to offer some thoughts on our next steps.

I've said it before, but I want to restate the point: I'm not against reserves. Fishermen want more fish as much as anybody does. But if we don't proceed with caution and we don't make sure we are gathering the right data to gauge the impacts of reserves, we could end up spending millions of dollars and taking millions more out of our economy without any real benefit to the health of our ocean.

Over these past few years, I've watched environmental groups run around the state dispensing data at town hall meetings that may or may not be relevant to Oregon's ocean. I've spent more than 50 years fishing this ocean, and I've also been involved in a lot of research in these waters. One thing I've learned is that what's true elsewhere in the world isn't always true here.

At the heart of the discussion of marine reserves is an effort to move away from our current regime of managing single species to what's called ecosystem-based management. The concept makes sense. But we can never get there if our hands remain tied by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it almost impossible to address the overpopulation of seals and sea lions.

All of the discussions about reserves have failed to include the marine mammal issue. My basic premise is this: If marine mammals are smart enough to swim up the Columbia River and learn to kill sturgeon and salmon in the locks of Bonneville, they will be smart enough to zero in on any increase in fish populations in their normal feeding grounds. That's exactly the situation marine reserves are liable to create.

The numbers tell us where the problem lies. Remember, a dead fish is a dead fish, whether killed by man, a predator, or natural causes. There are about 300,000 sea lions and 30,000 harbor seals off our coast. The average full-grown California sea lion eats 75 to 80 pounds of fish a day.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife researchers estimate these pinnipeds are consuming between 45,000 and 70,000 metric tons of ocean fish annually. If we narrow that to those that feed in nearshore waters, it's still an estimated 13,000 metric tons annually. Meanwhile, commercial and sport fisheries are taking about 5,000 metric tons of fish a year. So who is the real villain in the decline of nearshore fisheries?

Marine mammals like an easy meal. One of the arguments in favor of reserves is that they will create havens for large, egg-laying female fish. It's happened in other reserves. But these spawners are big and they're slow. Whom do you think the marine mammals will target first?

Before we step too far off the marine reserves cliff, we need to establish a few locations and make sure we are ready to collect hard data about the effects of changes in fish populations in these areas. OPAC recommended two reserve sites be approved and targeted three others for further study over the next two years.

To me, this is a prudent step. We need to develop and fund research programs that will give us the data we need before taking the next steps. When we establish marine reserves here, I want them to be the best thought out and best planned reserves in the world. The only way this can be accomplished is to engage people who are actively working with these species on a daily basis and who can help all of us learn about the species' behavior and surrounding environment.

Everyone who really cares about the future of Oregon's ocean--everyone who wants to do something more than just talk about it--needs to demand that we put more dollars into research at the federal and state levels. Right now, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is doing good work with limited resources. But the National Marine Fisheries Service has placed its research emphasis on Steller Sea Lions in Alaska and has neglected our waters.

The state legislature needs to make thorough and collaborative scientific research an absolute condition for establishing reserves. It's the only way to make sure that ecosystem-based management is more than just an idealistic concept. It's the only way to make sure that we are helping our ocean become healthier.